All summer the governor told us through commercial after commercial that we are stronger than the storm. Many of those ads were shot at beaches along the Jersey coast, with Chris Christie seemingly imploring all of us to get off the couch and race to the Shore.

Maybe Sandy deserves the rap, but perhaps the way some of these Shore communities do business should be looking into, as well. Let's count the ways that people just might be fed up with the Jersey Shore. There the $5 to $7 for a beach badge, not to mention a ban on canopies, and alcohol, and smoking. Nag, nag, nag.

And we're not even talking about the cost of staying at a home down the Shore.

Go to North Carolina and check out the prices of the huge houses with decks in every direction, with a pool, situated just a dirt road from a secluded, yet public beach. And guess what? There's no fee. And no one to harass you for having a canopy. Or a beer. Or a cigar.

Go to Florida beaches and you'll see the same thing -- no one is hassled and there's no mayhem and chaos on the beach. Can you believe that? The day after you have a glass of wine and a cigarette under a canopy, the sun came up and the world kept spinning -- and that beach survived. Really.

Back in the spring, the thought was that more people would spend more time at the Shore and spend more money, to help in the Sandy recovery efforts. It seems that hasn't been the case.

Jeff Serio, the rental manager at Ocean Beach I, II and III in Normany Beach, told the Star-Ledger hemeasures his summer in the number of vacation weeks his staff sells. Last summer, they did 4,000. This year, 1,800.